GCC Technologies FI/30 internal HD for Mac SE

[JeffC]

I picked up an SE a while back with a non-functioning internal HD. Long story short, today I realized the drive is an aftermarket upgrade from GCC. The machine was originally a dual 800k floppy machine, and this kit came with the drive, a badge for the front, and a strip that covered the upper floppy slot, with a window for the drive LED. I was able to get the Seagate drive to work by taking off the top and giving the spindle a little assist, and now it works great. I don't expect it to work forever, but for the moment I'll take it!

Does anyone know anything about this kit? I never realized there were aftermarket internal HD kits for the SE, I always figured people just bought the model with the HD or added an external. The drive cage is unique, and the 30mb Seagate ST-138N drive is physically larger than the Apple drive that would have come in an SE.

 

[retr01]

Hi @JeffC!

From what it looks like, GCC Technologies provided mass storage solutions to the Macintosh market back in the 80s and early 90s. Seagate was one of their suppliers.

I am digging for more information. Stay tuned.

 

[retr01]

In 1981, General Computer Corporation started in the video games market. Later on, they changed to GCC Technologies. Some products include various mass storage and printer solutions for the Macintosh market.

General Computer Corporation - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

As I browsed through some of the MacWorld issues between 1984 to 1990, I noticed that hard drive products from GCC were considered fast, robust, and more favorable for the Macintosh Plus and SE than other hard drive kits. In the earlier years before the SE, GCC Technologies had HyperDrive, the internal hard drive kits for the 512k and Plus. The kits included software from GCC Technologies that offered drivers, SCSI tools, and data management utilities.

 

[JeffC]

Thanks for doing the digging on that. @JDW did a video series a while back about his 512k with a HyperDrive 10mb internal drive. It's a great series of videos, and he talks about the history of the company in the 3rd video.

I browsed through some old MacWorld issues last night as well and made it to about Jan 1989. I didn't find much information about their internal drives for the SE, there were plenty of advertisements for their 512k/Plus internal drives, and also their external SCSI drives. The 512k drive was a much more complicated kit since that machine didn't have SCSI support, and the HyperDrive kit had additional hardware and a daughter board that clipped over the 68k CPU.

It would make sense that the internal SE drive kits weren't a big seller since the SE already had an internal drive option. I only found reference to the FI/40 40mb kit and not the FI/30 kit I have, the 30mb kit may have come out later. My Seagate drive has a 1989 date code. Maybe they came out with a lower priced 30mb option at some point after they introduced the 40mb kit.

@JDWs HyperDrive part 3 video:

 

[KennyPowers]

My SE SuperDrive had this 40MB Quantum HD installed in it on this red anodized aluminum "sled" that mounted ontop of the upper floppy drive and just barely fit under the CRT (both floppies were still installed):

 

[JeffC]

My SE SuperDrive had this 40MB Quantum HD installed in it on this red anodized aluminum "sled" that mounted ontop of the upper floppy drive and just barely fit under the CRT (both floppies were still installed):

View attachment 6679

Very cool, I had no idea you could (barely) fit an internal HD along with the dual floppies! I wonder if that was a commercial product, or something someone built themselves. Does the bracket have any markings?

 

[KennyPowers]

Very cool, I had no idea you could (barely) fit an internal HD along with the dual floppies! I wonder if that was a commercial product, or something someone built themselves. Does the bracket have any markings?

No markings, but it looks well-made...not something hacked together in a garage. It's two pieces. The drive is screwed to one piece that slides freely inside the other piece which is mounted ontop of the upper floppy drive via screws through those two tabs sticking out of the bottom and the "hooks" on the front edge. Once the drive is slid to where you want it, you tighten those two set screws on the side to lock it in-place. You can't slide the drive all the way forward when installed due to the angle of the CRT, but it fit. I suspect the original installer had to remove the neck board from the CRT though (I had to to remove the drive). It was really cramped in there when I first opened that SE up though, and removing that HD was a little scary because I didn't want to damage the CRT. Even though the HD worked, I replaced it with a BlueSCSI...partially because I didn't feel like attempting to shoehorn it back under the fragile CRT.

 

[retr01]

Wow, @KennyPowers! Barey fits right under the CRT, leaving a few millimeters clearance. Scary.

Cool! Yes, BlueSCSI fits better. Now you are tempting me to get a dual 1.44 MB drive SE.

 

[JeffC]

Wow, @KennyPowers! Barey fits right under the CRT, leaving a few millimeters clearance. Scary.

Cool! Yes, BlueSCSI fits better. Now you are tempting me to get a dual 1.44 MB drive SE.

Somewhat related question... Do you know what is required to switch a SE to support a 1.44 floppy? Obviously you need the 1.44 drive, can you just swap in the FDHD ROMs, or is there more to it?

 

[KennyPowers]

Somewhat related question... Do you know what is required to switch a SE to support a 1.44 floppy? Obviously you need the 1.44 drive, can you just swap in the FDHD ROMs, or is there more to it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_SE#Models

An upgrade kit was sold for the original Macintosh SE which included new ROM chips and a new disk controller chip, to replace the originals.

 

[retr01]

SE 800K has the IWM chip. The SE 1.44 MB has the SWIM chip. Not interchangeable. You will need to do a logic board swap.

 

[KennyPowers]

SE 800K has the IWM chip. The SE 1.44 MB has the SWIM chip. Not interchangeable. You will need to do a logic board swap.

So was that upgrade kit that Wikipedia describes basically a new logic board?

 

[JeffC]

SE 800K has the IWM chip. The SE 1.44 MB has the SWIM chip. Not interchangeable. You will need to do a logic board swap.

Ah ok, thanks for the info. For a moment I thought maybe I could swap the SWIM chip from one of my junk SE/30 boards, but Google quickly dashed those hopes.

 

[JeffC]

Somewhat related, can a 1.44mb drive be used in place of an 800k drive and still read/write 800k disks? I have a spare 1.44mb drive I'm going to clean up and see if it works, and I have a Plus with an 800k drive that isn't working properly. I thought I had read that you could swap the 1.44mb in place of the 800k and it would behave like an 800k drive.

Edit: Turns out the drive I thought was a 1.44mb is actually an 800k, I pulled it out of my parts SE/30, and it's actually a MFD-51W-03 800k drive that someone must have swapped in at some point.

 

[retr01]

Those Sony 800k and 2 MB (1.44) floppy disk drive units have different parts because the 800k and 1.44 MB disk formats are different.

 

[Kai Robinson]

SE 800K has the IWM chip. The SE 1.44 MB has the SWIM chip. Not interchangeable. You will need to do a logic board swap.

Incorrect. Just need to swap in the chip. The ROMs and IWM/SWIM are socketed.

 

[Kai Robinson]

Ah ok, thanks for the info. For a moment I thought maybe I could swap the SWIM chip from one of my junk SE/30 boards, but Google quickly dashed those hopes.

Well...the SWIM chip might be a different form factor, but the chip itself inside is identical. I made an adapter, but i've not been able to properly test it. Just adapts a PLCC44 to a DIP28.

 

[retr01]

Incorrect. Just need to swap in the chip. The ROMs and IWM/SWIM are socketed.

Ah. I stand corrected. Thank you, @Kai Robinson. I have more questions.

• Are all stock SE mobo revisions socketed for the ROM and IWM / SWIM?
• Are the IWM and SWIM the same form factor and number of pins?
• Is swapping out the ROM needed when swapping the IWM and SWIM?
• What are the ROM revisions for IWM and SWIM?

 

[Kai Robinson]

Yes, yes, yes and I'm not sure what the checksum is off the top of my head.

 

[retr01]

To be continued, Kai has a watch icon running trying to access that information.

I will try to find that information.